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Loving my life as a woman in agriculture one sip at a time

I enjoy having family gatherings and our home works well to host gatherings. We made plans to gather my mom from Grand Island, our newly married daughter, Kim and her husband, Richard, from Lincoln, my sister and two of her children from Gretna and Steve’s mom from Snyder over for a steak dinner to celebrate Mother’s Day. I would like to share with you one of the salads we enjoyed eating that day as part of my “May is Beef Month” series of family beef recipes.

My sister, Sharon, has a great Taco Salad recipe and had volunteered to bring this dish to our Mother’s Day celebrations, as we were in the middle of planting corn. However, Sharon was delayed in arriving to our celebration because of some missing beef.

This thank you was sent to us from Sharon’s daughter,
Nichole, several years ago after she spent some time
with us on our farm.

Sharon is my younger sister and has five children. We have many stories between us that bring us laughter and tears as many sisters often do. I admire Sharon in the way she has encouraged her children to keep after their dreams. Sharon has never been one to accept defeat as she modeled the virtue of tenacity in making sure her kids had what they needed. Sharon is a single parent and is witnessing the fruits of her labor as the children graduate, go to college, get jobs, etc… All good parents struggle to provide the best care they can for their children and that includes meals that nourish and are easy to make.

Sharon and her five children left to right: Oliver, Megan, Sharon, Anna,
Nichole and Michael.

We came up with the idea of meeting at our house for Mother’s Day because it seemed the easiest way to be together. I knew my time would be limited for house cleaning and food preparation. I was tied up in various farm tasks and asked for help with the food preparation. Sharon offered to bring a taco salad and a fruit salad. Sharon lives close to Omaha and has access to a grocery store 24/7. Sunday morning she shopped for her ingredients and went home to get the salad ready. When she looked for the ground beef there was none to be found. “Where’s my beef?” she asked her children and then realized it must have been left at the grocery store. A quick call and return visit to the grocery store enabled one of the kids to bring her the ground beef so she could finish her recipe.

I hope you enjoy this salad as much as we did!

Taco Salad
by Sharon McCoy

1 lb hamburger

1 taco seasoning

Cook hamburger, mix in seasoning. Remove from.pan, set aside to cool.

1-2 heads of lettuce, chopped or 1 large bag of lettuce mix

(I’m all about making it easy so I just buy the mixed lettuce)

2 avocados, chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

1 can of medium pitted black olives, sliced

2 cups of cheddar cheese

Mix together

1 large bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos (some for salad and some to snack on)

Dorothy Lynch dressing

Ranch dressing

Salsa

Mix meat with salad. Add dressing (I do a couple swirls of each) and about 1/2 cup of salsa. Toss together. When ready to serve, crunch a few handfuls of chips, sprinkle on top and mix in.